Prisons, jails, and other detention facilities must often allow visitation of inmates detained therein. However, security must generally be maintained with respect to the inmate for which visitation privileges are being provided. For example, not only must opportunities for the inmate to escape the confines of the detention facility be prevented, but provisions for the continued safety and well being of the visitor must also typically be made. Moreover, opportunities for exchange of certain items between an inmate and visitor must typically be prevented, such as to prevent contraband from being introduced into the detention facility.
Accordingly, many detention facilities have implemented a visitation booth configuration wherein an inmate and corresponding visitor are disposed on opposite sides of a partition, usually including a transparent panel (e.g., LEXAN window), and placed in voice communication via a closed circuit phone system. For example, a visitor may enter a booth, provided in a visitation area of the detention facility for privacy, wherein a wall includes a window looking into a room or corresponding booth in which a inmate to be visited is located. Telephone handsets are provided for each of the visitor and inmate, such that the handsets are coupled in a closed circuit to allow the visitor to speak to and listen to the inmate and vice-versa. A plurality of such booths and visitation phones may be provided to accommodate a plurality of visitors simultaneously.
Directing attention to FIG. 1, a typical prior art visitation phone system is shown as visitation phone system 100. Visitation phone system 100 includes visitor phone 110 and inmate phone 120, such as may be disposed upon opposite sides of a partition, within corresponding visitation booths, etcetera. Phone switch 130 is coupled to visitor phone 110 and inmate phone 120 to provide loop current thereto. Specifically, visitor phone 110 and inmate phone 120 are coupled in series to a plain old telephone service (POTS) port of phone switch 130. Accordingly, when both visitor phone 110 and inmate phone 120 are lifted off-hook, loop current flows through the phones allowing telephonic communication between visitor phone 110 and inmate phone 120.
The foregoing serial closed circuit configuration of the visitation phones is advantageous because a single telephone service port is utilized in providing communication between the pair of visitation phones (e.g., much like multiple extensions on a single residential telephone line can communicate when the extensions are lifted off-hook). Moreover, as the visitation phones are placed in direct communication with one another, the phones themselves are devoid of keypads for dialing, etcetera, thereby resulting in an inexpensive and easily hardened user terminal.
However, such a visitation phone configuration is not without its disadvantages. For example, the inventors of the present invention have discovered that it is impossible to control communication between the inmate and visitor when communication between phone switch 130 and either of visitor phone 110 or inmate phone 120 is desired. That is, both visitor phone 110 and inmate phone 120 must be off-hook for the loop to be completed, and thus communication between phone switch 130 is not possible between a selected one of visitor phone 110 and inmate phone 120 without the other one of visitor phone 110 and inmate phone 120 also being in communication. Similarly, although it may be possible to provide for recording of visitation conversations relatively easily, such as through connection of recorder 140 (e.g., a loop current activated recording device) serially in the loop, the operation such a recorder is not controllable. Specifically, when visitor phone 110 and inmate phone 120 are lifted off-hook, loop current flows causing recorder 140 to begin recording. However, if the conversation is private, or otherwise should not be recorded, there is nothing short of manual intervention to control recorder 140 not to record the conversation.
Moreover, the inventors of the present invention have discovered that, although recordings of visitation conversations may be made, accurately identifying the parties to the conversation is problematic. For example, although visitors identities may be checked upon entering the detention facility, and background checks may even be performed, there is typically nothing but hand written notes or logs to show what inmate is being visited by the visitor. Similarly, information with respect to which visitation booth or facility was used by an inmate at what time is typically kept in hand written notes or logs. Accordingly, there is nothing to associate the inmate with a recorded conversation except a manual search of paper records to identify the time and facility used by the inmate. This information may then be used to search recorded conversations for one associated with the time and facility used by the inmate. Identifying the recorded conversation associated with a particular visitor is even more problematic because the visitor must first be associated with an inmate and then the records searched as described above with respect to the inmate. Similarly, after identifying a recorded conversation as corresponding to a particular inmate, further searching of paper records is necessary in order to identify the other party to the conversation. Further aggravating the foregoing is the fact that such records are prone to error, inaccuracies, and incompleteness.